Birla affidavit: Birla properties not legally partitioned
Kolkata: K.K. Birla, B.K. Birla, G.P. Birla and Y. Birla on Wednesday filed four separate oppositions to the petition filed by R.S. Lodha seeking discharge of the caveats filed by the four Birlas, in the probate proceedings of the last will and testament of the late Priyamvada Birla, wife of the M.P. Birla. In the oppositions, the Birlas have contended that as the Birla properties have not been legally partitioned, each Birla has the right and interest over every and each property, save those that are separately acquired by any member of the Birla family.

The Birlas filed the caveats challenging the authenticity of the will left by Priyamvada Birla. The Birlas, it was contended, believe that the will, of which R.S. Lodha is claiming as an executor, is not the actual will of the late Priyamvada Birla, and so to obstruct Lodha's intervention into the Birla properties, all caveats have been filed. They have claimed that under the Civil Procedure Code, there is no provision for challenging a caveat, hence this proceeding is not sustainable in law.

In the affidavit it has been stated that of the six caveats filed, only four have been challenged and the remaining two by Laxmi Newar and Radha Mohta have been spared. So the rights of the remaining caveators, which have not been challenged, stands; hence the affidavit contends that when the unchallenged too have the right on the property of the late M.P. Birla, it stands to reason that equal right is shared by the other four Birlas. The matter is scheduled for hearing on August 25.
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J.C.Penny: Welspun India best global vendor
Chennai: J.C. Penney, which is one of the largest retailers in the US, has conferred the "Operational Excellence Award" for 2003 on Welspun India. According to a press release, J.C. Penney has adjudged Welspun India, as it's the best global vendor for terry towels. The company was evaluated on quality, on-time delivery, costing, product development, flexibility, management strength and technology.

Welspun India Ltd is the largest exporter of terry towels to the US from India and is the flagship company of the $440 million Welspun Group. Over 90 per cent of the Welspun Indian turnover is from exports. The company has already made its presence in the Indian home textile market with the launch of "Spaces" to address the complete needs of the home furnishings segment.
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Reliance: EC approves Trevira acquisition
Mumbai: The European Commission has approved Reliance Industries Ltd's acquisition of the German specialty polyester manufacturer Trevira. The approval for the Rs.440-crore acquisition will make RIL the largest polyester fibre and yarn maker in the world. Trevira, which was part of pharmaceutical major Hoechst, is a well-known polyester brand in Europe with a capacity of 1,30,000 tonnes a year. It was spun off into an independent business unit in 1998. Reliance announced the acquisition in June this year.

The Trevira acquisition along with other planned capacity addition by RIL will take its polyester capacity to 1.8 million tonnes a year, ahead of Taiwan-based Nan-ya which is the largest polyester producer in the world with a capacity of one million tonnes a year. RIL, which is acquiring an overseas manufacturing facility for the first time in its history, has bought the majority stake in Trevira from Deutsche Bank.
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Arvind to shift Mauritius operations to India
Ahmedabad: Arvind Mills Ltd (AML) has announced plans to shift its existing denim and garments manufacturing facilities from Mauritius to India by December 2004. This includes an eight million-metre denim manufacturing facility and a two million-piece jeans plant at Mauritius. The total investment in the project is Rs.40 crore. The cost of transfer of the total plant is estimated at Rs.12 crore, according to a company release here on Wednesday. This includes retrenchment of 510 employees and transfer of assets. AML will augment its Indian denim manufacturing capacity to 105 million metres after the relocation.

AML set up Arvind Overseas (Mauritius) Ltd by taking over a defunct denim mill, Shape Fabrics, in 1994 and invested on modernising the plant. Later, Arvind Spinning Ltd and a garment facility were set up in 2003 to vertically integrate the operations. The rationale behind Arvind's Mauritius investment was to benefit from the removal of the lesser developed countries (LDC) provision from the African Growth And Development Act (AGOA), which enables countries in the African region to make duty-free and quota-free garment exports to the US. However, this clause does not apply to South Africa and Mauritius, and the garments from these countries need to be from fabric manufactured in the AGOA region.
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Tata Steel staff to receive 20 per cent bonus
Mumbai: Tata Steel has announced the conclusion of its annual bonus agreement for the year 2003-04. As per the memorandum of settlement between the company and the Tata Workers' Union, the annual bonus linked with production and profitability works out to 19.70 per cent of salary/wage paid to an employee during the year.

"On the request of the Union and in consideration of the satisfactory performance during 2003-04, it has been agreed, as a gesture of good will, to round off the bonus percentage from 19.70 per cent to 20 per cent of salary already paid. At 20 per cent, the minimum and the maximum annual bonus payable will be Rs.13, 687 and Rs.55, 768 respectively. The total bonus payout for the year 2003-04 will be Rs.102 crore which will benefit nearly 41,000 employees.
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Apollo-Gleneagles plans two more hospitals in India
Kolkata: Apollo-Gleneagles Hospitals Ltd, a 50:50 joint venture between Apollo Hospitals Ltd and Parkway Group of Singapore, has planned two more hospitals in the country. The group's first hospital is located here. The joint venture will set up its second multi-disciplinary hospital in Mumbai and a third one in Bangalore.

The joint venture also eyes business opportunities overseas. West Asia and North Africa are now being considered for hospital projects. Apollo has also set up an office in London as part of its initiatives to attract British patients to its hospitals in India under the insurance-linked Nation Health Scheme.
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Apollo Hospitals to advise on Yemeni project
Chennai: Apollo Hospitals has announced that it has entered into a partnership with Yemen's Hayel Saeed Anam Group to provide advisory services to the latter's hospital project. A company release said that it would provide consultancy to set up a 160-bed super specialty hospital at Taiz, Yemen. It would be the largest private sector hospital initiative in Yemen.
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Apollo Hospitals and TTDC in tie up
Chennai: The Tamil Nadu Tourism Development Corporation (TTDC) has tied up with Apollo Hospitals to launch a 15 per cent discount coupon on the Apollo preventive health check to promote Tamil Nadu as a healthcare destination. The preventive health check can be conducted in any of the Apollo Hospitals or its clinics spread across the country at the special discount rate. The travellers privilege coupon comes along with the ticket purchased for any of the tours organised by TTDC.
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GlobeMed and Happy group tie up to train nurses for USA
Kolkata: The Virginia-headquartered global medical staffing major, GlobeMed Resources, has tied up with Happy e Services, a division of the Kolkata-based Happy Group of Companies, to provide training to Indian nurses and recruiting them to permanent positions in hospitals in the US. According to GlobeMed Resources, there was a severe shortage of trained nurses in the US. The figure in this regard has been pegged at 1,36,000 as of 2003. As such, there was great scope for fulfilling the demand by providing nurses trained in India. These nurses would be sent to the US under the Green Card option and, hence, they would be able to take their families along with them as well. To begin with, they could earn a monthly salary of Rs.2-3 lakh each.

Addressing a news conference here on Wednesday, Mr Kumaar said that, to be eligible to go to the US, every qualified nurse would have to take two separate examinations - the Commission on Graduate of Foreign Nursing School and the International English Language Testing System. These nurses would have to undergo training for a period of one year before they are ready to go to the US. While they would have to pay Rs.6,000 for the entire training, GlobeMed would bear the costs of the visa, green card, air tickets, examination fee, etc. GlobeMed does not charge the nurses for its revenue comes from the placement services fee that it gets from the US hospitals. GlobeMed had already placed 75 nurses in the US hospitals while another 195 green card applications were in advanced stages of processing.
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Mohan Breweries and D1 Oils in joint venture for bio-diesel
Chennai: D1 Oils Plc of Britain and the Chennai-based Mohan Breweries and Distilleries Ltd are planning a joint venture to produce bio-diesel, an automobile fuel from plants. According to a press release from the British Deputy High Commission, which is assisting the negotiations, the joint venture, D1 Bioenergy Services Ltd, will help farmers cultivate jatropha, whose seeds are a rich source of oil.

D1 Oils will provide the management expertise, refining technology and R&D backup. D1 Bioenergy will supply the farmers with the planting material, assist in cultivation, procure the seeds from the farmers and process them to produce the bio-diesel. The oilseed cake can also be used as fertiliser, animal feed or as a raw material to produce glycerine.

A subsidiary of D1 Oils Plc, D1 Oils India, is also working with Tamil Nadu District Rural Development Agency and the Coimbatore District Cooperative Milk Producers Union to promote jatropha cultivation on wastelands and marginal lands. The company has developed the technology to refine bio-fuel crops and to grow high-yielding crops on a large-scale in unused lands.
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BSNL awards network contract to Nortel and Nokia
New Delhi: Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd (BSNL) has awarded the world's largest contract for supply of 11 million cellular lines to Nortel and Nokia. The contract, worth $860 million, envisages supply of Global System for Mobile (GSM) based mobile network across the country over the next one year.

While Canada-based Nortel will supply 7 million lines for the South and eastern parts of the country, Finnish technology major Nokia will roll out 4 million cellular lines in the North for the state-owned company. Though Nortel had emerged as the lowest bidder for all the three regions, as per the terms of the BSNL contract no single company could bag the contract for all the sectors. The contract for the western region has already been awarded to the joint venture between French major Alcatel and ITI for 1 million lines.

BSNL has over 5 million cellular subscribers. Though it is adding more than 3 lakh subscribers every month, its growth is stagnating owing to lack of capacity. The contract with Nokia and Nortel will enable BSNL to achieve its target of 25 million subscribers by December 2005.
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RPG Enterprises to launch Spencer's Hypermarkets
Kolkata: RPG Enterprises has worked out a plan for its retail activities using the brand Spencer. It will start off with the launching of Spencer's Hypermarket at Visakhapatnam next month. The group has decided to set up approximately 20 such hypermarkets all over India during the next two years. The total cost will be around Rs.300 crore, which will be generated through internal accruals, debt and equity.

Spencer's Hypermarkets will be managed by Great Wholesale Club Ltd (GWCL), which is currently a wholly owned subsidiary of Spencer. The company said that property had already been identified for 13 such stores in the cities of Chennai, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Mumbai, Delhi, Vijaywada, Kolkata and Mangalore. Some of these cities will have more than one store. The group has also identified cities such as Kochi, Pune, Ahmedabad, Chandigarh, Coimbatore and Nasik for the hypermarkets but the associated property is yet to be finalised.
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Wipro to provide support for Visual Studio 2005
Bangalore: Wipro Technologies has announced that it would be providing support for the Microsoft Visual Studio 2005 Team System and looks forward to driving better integration between developers and IT administrators. Wipro feels confident that this will make designing, developing, and deploying applications a more efficient and predictable process, said a company press release.

Visual Studio 2005 Team System is an extensible lifecycle tools platform that enables teams to collaborate more effectively on the delivery of service-oriented solutions. The system will feature improved support for distributed, team-oriented enterprise application development, the release said.
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Juniper and Isilica to launch training centres
Hyderabad: Juniper Networks Inc, a network solutions provider, has drawn up plans to establish several Juniper training centres in the country and announced the first such centre in a tie-up with Isilica Networks Ltd in Hyderabad. The second centre would be commissioned by Isilica in about six weeks in Mumbai. Isilica is planning to establish more centres beginning with New Delhi and Bangalore.

According to Juniper the subcontinent's rapidly growing networking industry and it's own expanding presence in the Indian market is fuelling demand for quality training.As a networking solutions provider, Juniper has rapidly grown in the Indian subcontinent both by itself providing solutions for the leading telecom carriers and has further consolidated its position with the acquisition of network security provider NetScreen.
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